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“Boulder voters narrowly passed a historic ballot measure Tuesday that will allow the city to sever its ties with Xcel Energy and strike out on its own to start a municipal electric utility.A companion tax designed to pay for the legal bills and consultants fees that the city will incur on the way to starting such a utility also narrowly passed early Wednesday morning despite trailing in preliminary results all Tuesday night.As of 12:55 a.m. with an unofficial total of 82,724 votes counted, Boulder Question 2C, which allows for the creation of a municipal utility, passed with 51.8...

“The savings from the group purchase are enormous. With prices are around $4.40 per Watt installed for solar, Open Neighborhoods gets residential solar for $2.00 cheaper than the average prices reported by the Solar Energy Industries Association for the second quarter of 2011. That equates to a 6 cents per kilowatt-hour savings on solar over 25 years. Even with solar typically being cheaper in California, the group advertises savings of as much as 33% on a residential solar array.
The low group purchase price means that those who go solar will have cheaper electricity from their...

“Proponents of ballot issues 2C and 2B, which includes a $1.9 million tax increase in the first year to pay for planning and analysis, say that the utility industry desperately fears a public awakening, and that a John Brown-like raid on a monopoly in one place could galvanize electricity consumers all across the nation to push for change.”
via Boulder Seeks to Take Power From the Power Company – NYTimes.com.

“The measures would give the city permission to break from Xcel and start a municipal utility. Xcel Energy, once again, is by far the biggest contributor in the fight, pouring an additional $118,036 into its own issue committee and an additional $240,000 to the Boulder Smart Energy Coalition since the last round of financial reporting on Oct. 18.”
via Boulder municipalization: Fight over ballot measures tops $1 million – Boulder Daily Camera.

“If SmartGridCity was intended to demonstrate that Xcel was serious about modernizing Boulder’s grid, incorporating smarts and an ambitious renewable energy agenda, that didn’t pan out very well. (For coverage on the public relations debacle that cost recovery produced, see “Ratepayers on Hook for Xcel’s $44.5 Million SmartGridCity.”)
From many Boulderites’ perspective, SmartGridCity took too long to produce any tangible benefits, triple cost overruns caused outrage and, based on those two reasons alone, the relationship soured...

“About 1,100 Boulder-area electricity customers remained without power Thursday afternoon, according to Xcel spokesman Gabriel Romero. Along the Front Range, outages totaled 3,700 customers.Romero said 90 percent of the outages in Boulder should be resolved by this evening. He said its difficult to pinpoint when the remaining 10 percent will regain power because fixing “significant structural damage” relies on a web of workers to clear broken trees and restore damaged poles before electricity can be restored.On Thursday, Xcel had nearly 30 crews working in Boulder and 120...